


Sukkot

by Zordosia (orphan_account)



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Actually Jewish!Hamilton, Antisemitism, Canon Era, First Kiss, Goyim trying their damnedest, Judaism, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-19
Updated: 2016-09-19
Packaged: 2018-08-16 01:20:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8081131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Zordosia
Summary: Alex shows him the small silver six-pointed star about a month after they’d met. “It was my mother’s,” he tells him. When John doesn’t get it, he explains, “I’m Jewish.” John listens, surprised, as Alex tells him about how he had grown up going to Jewish schools and synagogues, how when his mother had died, he and his brother had been able to shed the identity a bit as they bounced from home to home, how the reverend who had sent him to America had made him promise to get baptized there, how Alex told King’s College that he had been baptized at Princeton, how he had quietly kept his faith.An Alex-is-actually-Jewish AU.





	

    Alex shows him the small silver six-pointed star about a month after they’d met. “It was my mother’s,” he tells him. When John doesn’t get it, he explains, “I’m Jewish.” John listens, surprised, as Alex tells him about how he had grown up going to Jewish schools and synagogues, how when his mother had died, he and his brother had been able to shed the identity a bit as they bounced from home to home, how the reverend who had sent him to America had made him promise to get baptized there, how Alex told King’s College that he had been baptized at Princeton, how he had quietly kept his faith.  
  
    “Why are you telling me this?” John asks.  
  
    “Because I needed someone else to know,” Alex says. Then he blushes a little and adds, “and you’re my best friend.” John smiles big at that, Alex smiles big back, and John sits and listens to Alex talk for the rest of the night about the rabbi who taught his class, the time his father snuck him and James water during Yom Kippur, and how his mother would light the candles every Shabbat.  
  
    John thinks about the fact that he’s Alex’s best friend a lot, that Alex trusted him so deeply after knowing him for such a short amount of time, and turns it all over in his mind wondering what it means. Later, John would remember how Tench once complained to all the aides about all the “damn Jews Calvert let into Maryland” and how they had all laughed along, and about the prayers to Jesus Alex bowed his head and murmured along to, and then he wonders a bit more about how Alex needed someone else to know.  
  
    Alex shows him his copy of the Talmud. It’s a large, worn, blue book, the title scratched off of the cover and spine. One night, when Alex is still working, John pulls it out and starts to read. He’s laboriously worked his way through about ten pages when he hears Alex snort. John glares.  
  
    “I’m sorry,” Alex says, while not sounding particularly sorry. “You just look so confused.”  
  
    “It keeps contradicting itself.”  
  
    “It’s a debate.” Alex gets up, sits down next to John on the bed. “It's the record of the different opinions of a bunch of rabbis.”  
  
    “So how do you know what to do?”  
  
    Alex shrugs. “They come to a consensus a lot. But sometimes it’s just showing you competing views.”  
  
    “Doesn’t that get confusing?”  
  
    Alex laughs and kisses his forehead, then very quickly stands up and goes back over to his desk. This does not help with John’s confusion at all. He opens the Talmud back up and reads until he falls asleep.  
  
    One question sticks with him after his readings, and he waits until the two of them are alone, walking back from a tavern together, both a little tipsy, to ask, “Why don’t you do all of the stuff you’re supposed to?”  
  
    Alex looks around the street before he answers. “Because I can’t. I can’t go to the tailor’s and tell him that actually, I’d prefer if my uniform didn’t mix textiles, and I can’t tell the canteen that yes I know we’re on the brink of starvation, but are they sure they slaughtered that cow right?”  
  
    He’s staring straight ahead. His hand is in one of his pockets, and John can tell he’s holding the star.  
  
    “When you’re rich,” John tells him, trying to lighten the mood. “Then you’ll be able to have your steak and your clothes made however you want.”  
  
    Alex shakes his head, stops in his tracks, frowns. “No, I won’t. You don’t- I’m never going to be able to really be a Jew.”  
  
    His fist is balled up on his thigh. John waits, mainly because he doesn’t know what to say.  
  
    “I can’t exactly go to a synagogue, not without getting socially ostracized. I can’t do anything that might arose suspicion. They hate us, John. I can’t be wholly Jewish and advance. I- I have to choose.”  
  
    John wraps an arm around him and feels Alex lean into him. “I’m really sorry,” John says. “I wish you didn’t have to.”  
  
    Alex shakes his head. “But I do and I did.” Alex wraps an arm around John’s waist and lets him lead him home, humming some song in a way that leaves John vibrating for the rest of the night.  
  
    They move soon after that, and John and Alex are torn from the comforts of the small house they were staying in, and are put back in a tent. It’s late October and each day it seems to get colder and their blankets and tent walls seem thinner.  
  
    “You want the bright side of this?” Alex asks one night, as the two of the huddle together on a bedroll.  
  
    “Please,” John says.  
  
    “This is kind of like a sukkah.”  
  
    “You know I don’t know what that is.”  
  
    Alex laughs. “During the fall, we’re supposed to sleep outside, in makeshift dwellings. It’s around Sukkot-time, and I think this kind of qualifies.” John can feel his head turn a bit. “Not a very good sukkah, though.”  
  
    John smiles. Alex sounds cheerful, Alex is telling him about his religion, this might not be warm weather or a new coat but it’ll do. “What makes a good sukkah?”  
  
    Alex pauses, then sighs. “I mean I guess it can’t really be a sukkah at all without an etrog and lulav.”  
  
    “You know I don’t-“  
  
    “It’s what you use to bless the sukkah. The lulav is a bunch of palm leaves.” Alex is drawing and motioning in the air, John can kind of make it out. “The etrog is some knobby-fruit thing. We used coconuts back in the caribbean, but apparently it’s this specific fruit, one of our books had a drawing of it.”  
  
    John’s thinking now. “And anyone can do the blessing?”  
  
    “Yeah, otherwise it’d be a hell of a chore for the rabbi.” Alex yawns. “Look, I can tell you more about it tomorrow, ok?” Then he curls up around John, and as John lies there thinking he is thoroughly impressed with his own ability to not be distracted.  
  
    Alex grumbles semi-consciously when John leaves their tent early in the morning and he gets some strange looks for leaving early from dinner. But John is determined to give Alex’s bright side back to him.  
  
    He knows Alex will be working late, so he sets it all up that evening. Every set of footsteps sets his heartbeat racing, he doesn’t know if it’s Alex or someone else who will, for some reason or another, walk into his tent and ask him what the hell he’s doing. Then, finally, he hears a set of footsteps getting closer and closer and then Alex is lifting up the tent flap and climbing in.  
  
    Alex stares at him. John is sitting there, holding some ferns in one hand and some walnuts knotted up in a skin in the other.  
  
    “It’s- I tried to make you an etrog and lulav.” Alex is still staring. John shakes the ferns a bit. “We don’t have palm trees but I figured, uh, this would work alright- and uh-“ he raises the walnuts, “I kind of tried to make this look like the thing you described-“ He is interrupted by the sound of Alex’s hysterical laughter.  
  
    “It’s terrible,” Alex finally manages to get out.  
  
    John looks down at his hands and realizes he doesn’t have much of a defense here.  
  
    “It’s- the etrog is a fruit, John.” Alex takes the walnut contraption out of his hand. “An apple would have been at least related. This looks like you welded a bunch of scrotums together”  
  
    John can feel his entire face burning. “Look, you’re right, this was dumb, I’m sorry.“  
  
    “No, John, it wasn’t, stop.” Alex puts his hand on the side of his face, completely arresting John’s progress out of the tent. “I mean, it was dumb. But it was also really sweet.” His thumb is tracing patterns on John’s cheek now. “I never thought someone here would- want to be a part of this with me.” He’s moved a bit closer. He smiles. “Even if you did try to do it with a bunch of scrot-“  
  
    John kisses him. Alex’s hand tangles up into John’s hair. They pull apart after a minute.  
  
    Alex looks down. “I’m sorry, John, I can’t.”  
  
    John would walk straight into British bayonets right now, if every muscle weren’t completely frozen in horror.  
  
    “My father will never let me marry a gentile.”  
  
    John pushes him down onto the bedroll as Alex laughs. He gets out a, “you complete DICK,” before Alex pulls him down after him.

**Author's Note:**

> Alexander Hamilton did go to a Hebrew school when he was a kid. But he wasn't Jewish, and most of the claims that he was were based on antisemitic stereotypes about moneygrubbing Jews. He was against antisemitic discrimination and expressed admiration towards the Jewish people, which is probably the best we could hope for at the time but he wasn't exactly Moses.
> 
> I'm at theoroark on tumblr if you want to reach me there.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading this, and any comments or kudos will make my day.


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